About ten years ago, the phone rang at the SlackFamily homestead. It was just past six in the morning, and younger slackbrother j was the only one home as SlackMom and SlackDad were at the gym.
"Baba...gone!" the voice said on the other end of the line.
"Baba?" younger slackbrother j. asked. "Is she okay?"
"Gone," said the voice. Then she hung up.
...
My parents returned from the gym at 7am. Younger slackbrother j. was there, waiting at the edge of the stairs for them to come inside.
"Baba may or may not have died," he told them.
My mother headed straight for the phone and called my aunt.
...
My aunt had received the same early-morning call. She drove over to my Baba's house, about a 20 minute drive, where she was still living with her caretaker. Her caretaker - a 60-year-old-woman also named Nina - greeted her at the door in tears. Nina spoke very little English, but that was okay, because so did Baba.
"She's gone!" Nina wailed as she led my aunt to the back bedroom, where my Baba was laid out in the dress that she always told one of us grandkids that she wanted to be buried in. Her wrinkled face was powdered and she had a fresh coat of the bright red lipstick that she wore on fancy-dress occasions.
"Did she go to bed like that?" my aunt asked.
"I buried my mother, I buried my father!" Nina explained, all the time making the sign of the cross (up, down, right, left, in the Orthodox fashion.) "Now I must bury Anna!"
"We have people to do that here," my aunt told her. She then approached the bed and sat down gently next to her 80-year-old-mother. My aunt leaned over and placed her ear to my Baba's chest, and then she sat back up and pinched Baba's nose.
Moments later, Baba woke up.
"IT'S A MIRACLE!" Nina screamed and immediately began to pray.
"Can I get a Delchamps donut, herring and a Pepsi?" Baba asked.
I guess dying makes you hungry.
She died for good in 2004.
